Marketing Myths – What Works Today Will Work Tomorrow

/

Welcome to the first edition of our brand new weekly blog series, Marketing Myths. Each week’s installment of Marketing Myths will aim to bust a commonly held belief about marketing. Last week, we busted the “Low Price Wins” myth.

This week’s myth = What Works Today Will Work Tomorrow

It’s amazing how many companies seem to think that if they just keep doing the same things that got them to where they were at the height of their success, they would continue to be successful. And too often those companies end up disappointing, going through sales dips, restructuring and frantically trying to figure out where they went wrong.

Tastes change. Technology changes. Competitors change.

In a world that changes as fast as this one, you can only ride a successful strategy for so long. The best companies continue to adapt and add to their strategy.

Marketing is an area where we should all be in a constant state of testing and improving. From individual channels, to ad copy, to promotional materials, to special offers – we need to question everything we do.

There is no such thing as a perfect marketing plan. Just because something is working, does not mean that it can’t work better. And just because it’s working now, doesn’t mean it will continue to work forever without regular tweaks and updates.

The message is this, don’t rest on your past successes. Continue to innovate and improve.

Stay tuned next week for another myth. If you have a marketing myth you’d like me to bust, add it in the comments below.

What to Test – Part 4

/

Welcome to the latest edition of our new weekly blog series, What to Test. Each week, we will introduce a new test idea. We’ll explain why it’s important to test it, what you might learn, how to carry out the test, and what to measure in order to determine a winner. Last week we tested Email Design.

The Test = Button Text

Why?

It may sound silly, but the actual words on a button can affect whether or not someone clicks on it. And whether that button is at the bottom of a web form, in an email, part of an ad, or somewhere on your website, the purpose of that button is to get clicked. So we want to make sure the button says whatever it needs to say to get clicked more.

We will call the percentage of people who click the button the button’s conversion rate. And this test is meant to improve the button conversion rate.

Think about all the buttons you have on your website, and imagine how much of a difference you can make in your conversion rates if you are able to increase the amount of people who click on all of them.

How?

Everyone is going to start this test in a different position. Because depending on where the button is and its purpose, it will say something different. Whatever it says now will act as our control version for the test. Now it’s up to you to come up with different words and phrases to test.

To help, consider this. The button should be the one final call to action for the person who is looking at it. It should be active and informing, telling the person where they will get to or what they will get when they click it. I recently did some testing with “submit” buttons on a web form. We tested the control (submit), against the following alternatives – go, next, I’m ready. I won’t tell you which won, but I’ll tell you that I was surprised.

This is a great test for a tool like Optimizely, which lets you test multiple versions of a page without any development work. Set up the test with a couple of different buttons, and sit back and watch the numbers come in.

Anything to add? As always, use the comments below or Twitter #whattotest to keep the conversation going!